Tumbleweed Whenever you think of the Wild West of America, you think of cowboy movies and tumbleweed, perpetually tumbling around a desolate landscape.
Salt lowers the freezing/melting point of water, so in both cases the idea is to take advantage of the lower melting point. Ice forms when theÂ­ temperature of water reaches 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). When you add salt, that temperature drops: A 10-percent salt solution freezes at 20 F (-6 C), and a 20-percent solution freezes at 2 F (-16 C). On a roadway, this means that if you sprinkle salt on the ice, you can melt it. The salt dissolves into the liquid water in the ice and lowers its freezing point.
A: Salt water will only freeze if it gets cold enough. For water as salty as it can get, that s -21 C. When you put salt on ice it will melt some of the ice but only if the temperature is above -21 C. So at any temperature where fully salty water will freeze, salt won t melt any ice.